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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28509393">To Deny the Stars (Fire and Powder)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire'>Coldest_Fire</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), House of Night - P. C. Cast &amp; Kristin Cast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blue fledgling Spike, Dru never has a good time, F/M, Her canon backstory is worse y'all I'm making this easier, I don't know which HoN characters are coming in but probably some, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Kidnapping, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Neferet Does Not Like Angelus, Otherverse, Red fledgling Dru, Romeo and Juliet References, Set during Neferet's war, Spike wears his heart on his sleeve, You can skip chapter 5 to avoid it, before the Red Vamps are given their humanity back, canon character death (otherVerse Zoey), gratuitous use of poetry, like usual, pre-Lost, rating increased because of Angelus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:00:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,006</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28509393</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Stars remain in breaths of powd’r and fire,<br/>the fume of sighs that never made a sound.<br/>The last she sees, the angel will deny her.</p><p>
  <em>Promise you'll be consumed?</em>
</p><p>Spike is a third former when he first meets Dru. She hands him a poem one day, and then disappears before his eyes, after making him promise not to stop looking. After one kiss. Spike, confused and consumed by this woman he's hardly met makes good on his promise and gets sucked into a bigger and bigger mess with the Blue, and then the red army, chasing ghosts and monsters to find her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Drusilla/Spike (BtVS)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Which as They Kiss Consume</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey guys! look at me, combining two small fandoms. This is part of my super-secret mission for Spike/Drusilla to overtake Spike/Angel in the Buffy tag. It's only 40-something fics. I could do it. </p><p>For those coming from Buffy, and seeing all this House of Night stuff for the first time, here's a speed-run of the premise. In House of Night, the Goddess Nyx creates vampires. Humans are marked--they magically receive a blue crescent moon on their foreheads that denotes them a fledgling vampyre. They then go to special vampyre schools to learn to adapt to their new species. Except some of them just...die. Their body can't sustain the usually 4 year process to become a vampyre, and they just die in a flood of their own blood. This is called rejecting the change. Fledglings that do this usually wind up with a red crescent moon on their foreheads, as a second kind of vampyre--these more feral, with a higher need for blood. </p><p>These were kept secret, until used as an army by a rogue High Priestess, Neferet. She pretty much decided to declare war on humanity. That comes in in chapter 2, so don't worry about it. </p><p>As mentioned, becoming a vampyre is usually a 4 year program. This has a form system to it, third form being first year (don't ask me why...)</p><p> </p><p>For those coming in from HoN: Spike and Dru are my favourite Buffy characters. Spike goes by William, becasue I'm going to have his name-change to Spike come later in the narrative. Spike, in buffy, was a nerdy poet in the 1880's, sired by Drusilla, who spent more than a century with her. Also became a badass in that time. like killing vampire slayers is another level. He tells someone once "our love was eternal...literally!"</p><p>Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Dru was sired by Angelus, who is pretty much the most "flamboyantly cruel" character in the series (quote from wiki). He finds out she has visions, and spends between 8-13 years stalking her, kills her family, waits 5 years, then kills the nuns that took her in. And then does pretty much everything he can think of to hurt her, sires her, and makes her a vampire. Fucked up stuff. Fortunately no one dies in her backstory in this fic, but he's basically just as cruel (offscreen). This takes place in 1860, and in 1880, she finds Spike, who pretty much becomes her protector. If you want an idea of what that's like, I have a fic called "These violent delights (pen and sword)" that talks abut it. check the warnings on that before you read it.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>William's life flips upside down. hard.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As typical for me, this chapter I'm an English major. Dru's villanelle has Romeo and Juliet references all over it, and William/Spike makes a comment that Loren Blake's interpretation of John Donne's Elegy is contraceptive. It's a kinda unpleasant renaissance poem that objectifies Donne's mistress (feat. one uncomfortable colonial metaphor). fitting for Loren. Yuck.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time he heard her voice, he was still <em>William</em>. A third-former with stars in his eyes. The war hadn’t yet begun. Zoey was even in his poetry class—she sat two seats off the centre of the aisle, and one row back from the front. Everyone knew who she was, but no one yet knew what she was going to cause. She was just a fledgling with special Marks, and if he’d heard correctly, an affinity for all 5 elements. But she seemed like a regular girl. She had friends. She sat in class.</p><p> </p><p>He could have painted the room—running through the details over and over did that to a person—Zoey was beside Stevie Rae, the girl at the front with no last name. The group of guys from fencing at the back, two of whom were surprisingly into the poetry. The board, that perpetually had dust and snatches of words, and the yellowed, well worn anthologies on shelves on either side. The Professor Blake liked to sit on top his own desk, and lectured more on his feelings on the poetry than the poetry itself. Uncharitably, William thought his read on John Donne’s <em>Elegy</em> was contraceptive at best.</p><p> </p><p>He also noticed Zoey. He’d often deliver his lectures to her, his eyes hardly scanning the rest of the room. That was part of why William never left the room until everyone else was out. He knew how that man treated the fledglings he mentored, and watching Zoey so intently made him even more suspicious. He wasn’t going to stop putting himself in the way. That was going to be his day—obstruct Blake, finish his sonnet project, get some lunch, and then fencing. A simple day.</p><p> </p><p>Instead his life changed forever. Blake called on someone from the back to share a part of her project. William, out of respect—mostly because he’d been laughed at when he shared last, and didn’t want her to share in the shame—didn’t look at her when Blake called her.</p><p> </p><p>“It’s not finished,” he heard a gentle voice behind him admit. She sounded familiar despite that he’d never heard her before. Her accent sounded like home—he didn’t doubt she’d moved to America only a couple years earlier, in time to be Marked, if she wasn’t a transfer student. He’d have to ask her where in the UK she’d come from, he decided. Somehow, she sounded like home.</p><p> </p><p>“It’s hardly started, but it will be finished soon,” her voice had a certain mournful quality to it, as though the ending of the poem—or perhaps the incompletion was a vast tragedy. She cleared her throat and her voice changed. It seemed to gain the kind of gravity the High Priestess’ took on when she invoked the Goddess—they still did that back then. “Stars remain in breaths of powd’r and fire,/the fume of sighs that never made a sound./The last she sees, the angel will deny her.”</p><p> </p><p>He couldn’t have been the only one who got chills.</p><p> </p><p>It seemed he was. Blake was more interested in picking apart what kind of poem it was—a villanelle, and trying to ask about the religious symbol from another religion. William chanced a look at her, and he was almost convinced she wasn’t of this earth. She had the face of the angel statues he passed in graveyards visiting his mum. The same beautiful, mournful air, but in living colour. Her face was surrounded in a flood of deep brown hair that had the slightest bit of a curl to it. The moon in the night sky. She should have stood out to him when she entered the room, the way she was dressed.</p><p> </p><p>She wore white, which was atypical around here. A white dress that looked like an artefact. Reegency era, with a dark blue ribbon the colour of the crescent on her forehead just under her chest, and a long flowing skirt that reached her ankles. The third form pin had been added, dangling by a necklace, to make it permitted. She looked as though she was from a bygone time. He felt if he didn’t keep seeing her, she’d vanish, a ghost.</p><p> </p><p>She acknowledged him, once they moved to a different reader, her grey blue eyes finding his, imploring him to something. “Stars remain in breaths of powder and fire,” she mouthed, and he nodded at her, as the line clicked to him.</p><p> </p><p>“Fire and powder, which as they kiss consume,” he mouthed back.</p><p> </p><p>Blood rose to her cheeks, and she looked down at her paper, “please be consumed,” she mouthed. She looked as though it was life and death. As though she needed him to take her word to heart. He wrote it at the top of his page: “fire and powder, please be consumed.”</p><p>He had no idea how much he would be.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>That day, the halls of his dorm building were dark. The blackout curtains in his room gave the impression of night, even if it was likely around 3pm and sunny out. He heard a knock at the door, and got up to answer it, thanking the Goddess he’d fallen asleep in pants. He wandered to the door, blonde hair askew, in loose pyjama pants and no shirt, expecting one of the other guys on the floor needed to borrow a condom (why did anyone think the chronically single guy would have any?)</p><p> </p><p>He opened the door, and there she was. She almost glowed in the dim light of the hallway, still in that white dress. She took his hands while he stared at her, baffled. “There isn’t time,” she whispered, “and there isn’t a way out, you promised me you’d be consumed.” There were tears inher eyes, and he took a step closer to her, on instinct alone. She lay her head on his chest, and took a breath in, until it stopped coming in shaky. Only then did he speak.</p><p> </p><p>“I promised you I’d be consumed,” he repeated, “and I am,” he promised her, “why isn’t there time?” He wondered if she was going to reject the change, if she’d been coughing. He’d gladly keep her company, but the idea tore at him. She couldn’t be ephemeral.</p><p> </p><p>She shook her head, “I tear it all down if I stay too long. This is the only chance,” she told him. He felt tears on his chest, wet drops that slid down his skin. “I finished it. Swear you won’t tell?” She asked, pushing a rolled up piece of paper into his hand.</p><p> </p><p>“I swear,” he breathed, holding tightly to the scroll she’d given him. “Please, can you tell me what’s going on?” He asked, his eyes almost begging her to let him in. There was a reason she didn’t look at his face.</p><p> </p><p>She shook her head. “It’s all there in your hand. Any more and the stars won’t be denied. I believe in you,” her voice broke off, “I…I see you. Everywhere. I will see you.” She vowed, her voice gaining some strength, rising above a whisper.</p><p> </p><p>William whispered, “it sounds like we’re both consumed,” he hesitated a moment, trying to pull together something that came close to the level of her villanelle, quickly. Nothing came, however fast he tried to run through rhymes. Nothing that didn’t sound artificial. “You’ll see me, and I’ll feel you,” was all he had in him to say. “And when you need me…”</p><p> </p><p>She nodded. “When I need you, you’ll deny the stars,” she assured him, “you always do. You always can.” Before he had time to react, she cupped his face in her hands and stood up on her toes, pressing her lips to his. For a moment, time didn’t exist. All that did was their lips, on each other, soft enough it was almost as though it never happened, even if it would change both of them for years—if not forever. It was almost intangible, and it was enough.</p><p> </p><p>They parted, the air between them warmed with breath, and looked at each other a moment. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and released him, taking off at a sprint down the hall. William stood for a moment, dazed, before he ran after her.</p><p> </p><p>“Why can’t I deny the stars tonight?” He called, losing sigh of her, He didn’t stop until he found himself in the courtyard, the sun searing his eyes, birds singing, and the girl gone. She was an apparition, in the end, walking into his life and disappearing into smoke. He sat down beneath the tree in the courtyard, shading his eyes, and unrolled the scrap of paper in his hands.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Stars remain in breaths of powd’r and fire,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>the fume of sighs that never made a sound.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The last she sees, the angel will deny her.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>No time now for chivalry or ire,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In halos of ash are our martyrs crowned—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Stars remain in breaths of powd’r and fire.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Listen close, we implore you, inquire,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Beyond the trails of ash she will be found,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The last she sees, the angel will deny her</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Lest immured she become a liar</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Empyreal body buried in the ground</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Stars remain in breaths of powd’r and fire.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>To extol her before all of his choir</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He makes his virtuosity renowned</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The last she sees, the angel will deny her</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>To Scorch her yet with adamant desire</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The edict of th’accuser will abound</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Stars remain in breaths of powd’r and fire.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The last she sees, the angel will deny her.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>At the very bottom was a name, <em>Drusilla.</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. His North Star</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>William Can't find the girl that started it all, but he sure can find traces of her. The first overture of war is made, when Zoey turns up dead.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So I'm a masochist. I average one poem per chapter. I love this fic but wow. This would be so much faster if I did anything but that. I haven't been a poet in some time. WHoops. </p><p>SO: HoN readers, there are two characters from BtVS introduced in this chapter. in this case, I'm not going to explain them. You'll see what they do when they do it. Bad vibes all around. </p><p>Also poor Z. It's a shame that's just a part of OtherCanon. I really need to ever write about her sometime.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Stars remain in breaths of powd’r and fire,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>the fume of sighs that never made a sound.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The last she sees, the angel will deny her.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The following night, William went to poetry with a mission. He arrived a solid five minutes early, and took a seat that wasn’t his usual, toward the back. The empty seat beside where she sat. In saint pencil, he saw a swirling design of stars around a crescent moon. The other half of the moon was shaded in, and disintegrated into the sky, first in large chunks, and then in little bits and shards, then dust. <em>powder.</em> There were no words on it, but he knew he was supposed to see it somehow. He felt like it was addressed to him. He waited.</p><p> </p><p>Others came in: Zoey, Stevie Rae, The guys, Elizabeth, and she never did. He stared at the door while Elizabeth workshopped, and others chimed in, uncharacteristically silent. He wrote, and stared, putting together a message to her, his response to her promises. His pen scratched across the surfaces of the notebook, crossing out and amending until it reached a draft, eyes constantly checking, waiting for her to enter. To hear. He didn’t realize the room was silent, and people were staring until Blake cleared his throat, “William, I appreciate the brevity is the soul of wit, but ideally, your poem should be composed of words.”</p><p> </p><p>He’d forgotten he was workshopping after Elizabeth. <em>Fuck</em>. “I was hoping all the class would be here for this,” he hedged, before taking a deep breath, and reading the words that he hadn’t scratched from the page. The ones that were enough.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Fire and Powder, please be consumed.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You promise there’s no time</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A fallen star is soon exhumed</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll keep digging till I’m-</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Ready for chivalry to die.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Exhausted past my ire</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Past the point of wondering why</em>
</p><p><em>Just searching for my fire,”</em> his meter seemed almost whimsical fro what it talked about, dancing back and forth between lines as dizzily as he’d been trying to pull together her message. “It isn’t perfect yet,” he excused himself, leaving out that it was written based on a villanelle he’d memorized, and written while staring at the door, waiting for her.</p><p> </p><p>Blake hadn’t heard the rest of her poem, but recognized <em>Fire and powder</em>, and zeroed in on that, asking, “William, I can’t help but notice you’ve drawn inspiration from another student in your opening line—would you like to explain that choice?”</p><p> </p><p>William bristled, not certain if it was because Blake had torn apart her work—in particular the angel symbolism, because he was accusing him of plagiarism, or because he distrusted him on principle. Something told him he couldn’t tell Blake anything about the rest of her poem, or even that he was searching. It felt inexplicably like Blake wanted the information out of him for reasons not related to class. His skin prickled.</p><p> </p><p>Knowing what he felt was irrational, he kept his voice level in his response, “Romeo and Juliet is where the allusion comes from—<em>Fire and powder, which as they kiss, consume</em>,” he quoted, “Drusilla’s poem shared the same tragic tone as the Friar’s Warning, so I spoke with her about collaborating—writing two takes on it that intertwine, because there were two sides to the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet. Hers was a villanelle—It will have a sort of cyclical nature, with the repeats. Mine is going to be a sonnet, because that doesn’t repeat. In using elements of her text but never reaching the exact lines, by the Volta, it comes up short. They’re intended not to be able to quite reach.”</p><p> </p><p>Zoey was looking at him, Stevie Rae beside her whispered something. They seemed as though they liked it. He hoped he seemed plausible. Reaching out and not being able to touch felt more and more like what he was going through. It wouldn’t be hard to elicit the feeling in the poem. William tensed when Blake continued, “I don’t see the angel in yours, is that for a reason?” He asked.</p><p> </p><p>Blake wanted to know what the angel was doing there. It seemed out of place, in their theology. He’d criticized it in her poem. He redirected, “I’m of two minds here—the last she sees, the angel will deny her was her line. If the angel denies her, would my speaker hear of her through this angel? I’m working through that. The angel may appear in the third stanza—I don’t think I’d want that in the Volta, I’d be covering the “as they kiss” portion there.”</p><p> </p><p>Zoey put up her hand, and Blake called on her. She started by telling William how much she liked the idea, and how pretty the concept was—he remembered her boyfriend was the guy who went to monologue competitions, so It didn’t surprise him that she was familiar. Especially with Romeo and Juliet. The last thing Zoey ever said to him was to ask if he wanted to tie <em>as they kiss consume </em>to <em>thus with a kiss I die</em>.</p><p> </p><p>He liked the idea. He had no idea this was the end of the line. Perhaps he should have expected it.</p><p> </p><p>At lunch, a girl came to him. A blonde he’d never met before, whose long, almost platinum hair was down and almost pin-straight. She wasn’t dressed like a student, in an almost painted on black dress that fell to just above the knee, though the sixth former pin that was clipped around one silken strap showed she was. He had trouble looking at her—he felt almost indecent. The neckline dipped low, and he did his best to look at her face, and not all it revealed. When he met her eyes they were hard as steel. “My roommate’s missing. Don’t suppose you’ve seen her?” She asked, voice just as hard.</p><p> </p><p>William froze. “Roommate…” he asked. “Drusilla?”</p><p> </p><p>She leaned over the table. “So you <em>do</em> know her. Where the fuck did she go?” She demanded. She leaned on the table as though this was all some great task, and she was exasperated with him for making her do it.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I was looking for her as well. She wasn’t in class today,” he offered.</p><p> </p><p>She cut off any more offers. “I think you know more than that. Rumour has it you were writing about her. And then there’s<em> this,” </em>she said, sliding him a drawing. It was of someone who looked plausibly like he could be his brother, hair slicked back, a scar through one eyebrow, but the same cheekbones. The same eyes. Drusilla had written, along the bottom, “brawling love, loving hate, anything of nothing first create.” And a small heart. He wondered if this was her version of drawing initials in hearts in the inside of a binder—she was quite a striking artist.</p><p> </p><p>He shook his head, “I don’t <em>know</em> what that is, or where she is. She came to me yesterday. She told me there was no time, and I think she’s in danger,” he told her, before his skin started to prickle and crawl, the same as it had when he was talking in class. He didn’t tell her about denying the stars, nor the villanelle.</p><p> </p><p>“Neferet’s already on my ass, you’re going to have to do better than that,” she insisted, “you know where she is—or you know where she’s going to be.” She pulled out a sticky note with the date and a rudimentary map of the House of Night, and an X beside the east wall. A star over the temple. “Just tell her to go back to her fucking room once you two are done hooking up in the temple, or whatever you have planned.”</p><p> </p><p>His jaw dropped, about to insist once more that he didn’t know what these meant, when the second visitor arrived.</p><p> </p><p>A man put his arm around her, pulling her into his chest. He made William uncomfortable somehow. There was this intensity to his being. His eyes burned. His posture loomed. He’d done nothing to make William tense, but he didn’t trust him, even if he could admit that he <em>shouldn’t </em>have elicited any reaction. He was a jock with spiked brown hair and brown eyes. Fifth former. He wasn’t afraid of half the sons of Erebus. He should have been no different. Looking at him made William want to climb out of his own skin. He made him restless, almost fight or flight. “Darla,” he greeted her, “Didn’t know third formers were your type now.”</p><p> </p><p>The woman, Darla, laughed. “Perhaps you’d know me if you weren’t late,” she chastised him, seemingly at ease with him. William couldn’t fathom how. “If you’re seeing other women,” she said flippantly, “I see no reason I <em>can’t</em> be talking to him.”</p><p> </p><p>He shook his head, “I know you, Darla. He doesn’t have it in him to be your type, what did you want?” He demanded, eyeing William critically, as though he didn’t trust him. William didn’t volunteer a reason, but didn’t look away either. He forced himself to meet his eyes. Darla had to have sensed whatever he had—she didn’t tell him either.</p><p> </p><p>As they walked away, he heard her reply, “to get out of trouble with Neferet so she stops giving a fuck about you coming in my window.”</p><p> </p><p>He tensed. That man was around Drusilla while she slept, and something about him was wrong. Maybe that was what was wrong. He was in the room with Darla, who was made of ice and steel and could take him, he assumed. Drusilla was terrified, when she found him. Desperate. She’d plead with him to be consumed. Did she run away? Was this all to get away from him? Why not involve Neferet, or ask him for help, or any less-drastic option? Why didn’t she tell him? He couldn’t have saved her from that man one on one, but he’d have let her sleep in his bed, and taken the floor. He’d have reported the man. Whatever it took. There was time. There were ways.</p><p> </p><p>He wished she’d seen them—assuming he was why.</p><p> </p><p>He stared down at the portrait, wondering why he looked so similar and so different. Flipping it over he read the lines of his poem from today, but in her hand, just as unfinished. “Breaths of stars are the fumes of lover’s sighs. Thank you for letting it consume” he read, below the unfinished poem.</p><p> </p><p>So she knew things, before they happened. She knew his words. She seemed to think he’d be her lover. He let that sink in for a moment, finger moving along the words with the same tenderness as she’d show her. She believed—she’d chosen him somehow.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“There is no singing to await</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In all the starless sky</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But my desires won’t abate</em>
</p><p><em>From every lover’s sigh.” </em>He scribed. He had to get closer to finishing it—after all, she was using it to show him what she heard—when he was supposed to find it. She’d left him clues, he realized, strewn through the future, to come to him as they were ready. She knew him before he did, heard his words before they were written.</p><p> </p><p>His head tipped into his hands. He wouldn’t get any rest now. He abandoned the sonnet two lines short, as well as his plates of food, walking form the dining hall. He passed through a dark, gaslit hallway, until he reached the courtyard, and then followed a narrow, cobblestoned path made of smooth rock to the temple. He didn’t hesitate at the door, opening it, and noting there were no more candles burning in it, which was strange. Normally the walls were dappled with light from the wicks of candles lined up along them. There were no candles to be found. He eventually managed to dig out a purple spirit candle that had rolled behind a shelf. Perhaps Neferet had needed all of them for some big ritual.</p><p> </p><p>The one left behind was small, but he didn’t have so many words to say. When he turned it over, there was a star carved into the bottom—it didn’t feel accidental that it was the only one left. She’d intended for him to pick it up.</p><p> </p><p>He took it out of the temple, to the tree he’d sat under in the courtyard, and lit it with his lighter—he’d stopped smoking since being marked—didn’t want to take the chance, but he still had it on him. The metal made a smooth click, and the wick of the candle caught fire. He inclined his head, “Spirit was the element you were closest to, love. It’s the whispers of every word I say before I say it. The things you hear and know that I <em>can’t.</em> It’s everything you’ve left to find me. Like the flame that burns its way down the candle, I am consumed. I’ll keep my promise to you, and you can see me, like you told me you would.” He reached he Volta, the turn in his poem.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>She’ll guide me yet to the abyss</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I am consumed thus with a kiss</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He wanted it to be true. He'd made a promise. He sat at the candle for a while watching the flame dance, and watching the metal cup it was poured in fill with liquefying wax. The flame burned lower, and he said another prayer. “Spirit, as the element that fills us. <em>The ghost in the flesh.</em> The part of us that feels and searches and loves, can you please carry my words to the Goddess?” He asked—he’d never been great at the praying—he’d never known what to say. “Can you watch over her? I don’t know what it is she’s going through that I can’t see. I don’t know when the time will come that I can be with her. But I want to send her what comfort and what safety I can, and I want to ask of you that you protect her until I can deny the stars for her, and be the one to protect her,” he plead.</p><p> </p><p>The wind blew, but time itself seemed to stagnate. He got the feeling he wasn’t alone, but that he was safe, as though there was a friend standing behind him. “And I’d like to ask you to help me follow her. It looks like she’s set everything out. All I have to do is understand. I just- I need to keep finding her. Everything she leaves behind for me to find. Can you please guide me, when I get lost, and miss the stars. The moon and the north star, to find my way.”</p><p> </p><p>And the breeze stagnated another moment, as the flame of the candle flickered. When it restarted, it felt deliberate, a push in a direction—east.It made sense. East was for Air, perhaps it had something to show him at the X. “Thank you, my Goddess,” he whispered, intent on following her as he was the poetry. He walked slowly, until he reached the towering oak, and then, on impulse, left his candle in a v-shaped fork in one of the branches. He then climbed up it, to sit atop the East wall.</p><p> </p><p>When he looked down, the world changed.</p><p> </p><p>Where Drusilla had drawn the X was a body. Zoey, from poetry, her head cleanly parted from her shoulders. Some hate slogan staked to her chest. His eyes could hardly parse what he was seeing deep red blood and the pallor of death. She looked so young.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> The blood seemed like it rippled, though it was still, impossibly dark.</span></p><p> </p><p>The purple candle, catching a strong breeze, nearly left the tree, so he reached for it, staring at it. Deep violet wax, like blood, the flame extinguishing into a rivulet of smoke. “Spirit?” He whispered, “can you take care of her,” he asked, looking down at Zoey. “Take her to the Otherworld. Keep her safe,” his voice caught. He knew why he’d seen this.</p><p> </p><p>He had to know what was at stake. In a pool of dark hair and red blood, that could just as well have been Drusilla.</p><p> </p><p>He poured the deep violet wax down the wall where it solidified in waxy tears. A grave marker.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So! You'll see another key figure from HoN cameo next chapter... and probably another damn poem.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Fumes Of Lover's Sighs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Zoey gets a proper funeral.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“Breaths of stars are the fumes of lover’s sighs. Thank you for letting it consume.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>What happened next, he wasn’t proud of.He’d dissected the villanelle a million ways, and his notes on it devolved into messy conspiracies. She’d told him he’d reached the fumes of Lover’s sighs, and traced it back—she might have been telling him to light the candle as well. Maybe that gave him a method of communication. Maybe that’s why <em>breaths of stars are the fumes of lovers’ sighs.</em> Because she was holding on, and he had to carry that torch. Because it came out in lover’s sighs—fumes—in the text, smoke was the fumes of lovers’ sighs, which came off the candles. It was a line of communication, he hoped. Maybe it meant he could ask her for help when he couldn’t find her. She <em>did</em> promise she’d see him.</p><p> </p><p>Maybe it was through the smoke. He’d make himself visible then.</p><p> </p><p>He got reckless.</p><p> </p><p>He couldn’t find candles, so he snuck off campus, and bought a box of them. Got followed to campus, and then had to drive past and give chase—tensions were at high, his concealer smudged. His car was worse for the wear. Someone drove into his bumper. Things were getting crazy—even still, he could never have predicted how far it was all going to spiral.</p><p> </p><p>He got his candles. Three boxes of them, which he kept in the trunk, and carried in in handfuls—as many as his pockets could fit. Something told him these were contraband now—things had changed. He wasn’t sure what had changed, but he felt that there was a reason they’d all disappeared from a previously stocked room. He lit one every day, but rationed how long he’d use them—he was practically entering a war zone to get more, and he wasn’t sure how much trouble he was going to get for smuggling them in after this. He’d whisper words into the column of smoke when he extinguished them. That was still who he’d wanted to be.</p><p> </p><p>He was still himself one other time—when he went to poetry. He’d started sitting beside her desk, staring at the door, waiting for her to come through, sit down beside him and tell him all this quest was over. She was here. It couldn’t happen—she needed him to defy the stars. He had that written on his arm—sometimes he thought about getting it tattooed.</p><p> </p><p>Drusilla had been missing 5 days, and Zoey gone for 4 when someone sat in her seat. Instinctively, he wanted to tell him to leave. She couldn’t come back unless he left room. Instead with a reluctant sigh, he said, “that seat’s taken.”</p><p> </p><p>The boy, who he realized he knew from fencing shook his head, “sweetie,” he said, his doe-like eyes holding nothing but sincerity, “she’s not coming.” And he sounded like he meant more than the insinuation that she was skipping class. He did stand up, and trade William seats, so William could sit where she had. William reluctantly took his seat in Drusilla’s desk, looking down at the swirls she’d sketched on the wood. He looked up toward the door, as though, somehow, sitting here meant she really couldn’t walk through that door. He’d known long before that there was no way she would—what he was involved in now, it was serious. She’d shown him how. Stevie Rae took her seat one desk up from Damien, her eyes red. She’d been crying. Of course she’d been crying.</p><p> </p><p>There was another boy beside her, talking to her, softly enough William could hardly hear. They were struggling. He supposed Damien had known Zoey too. He thought he remembered them spending time together. Damien leaned over to him, before Blake had taken his place at the front of the room, while the room was still loud with the other students talking—there was no end of talk these days. It seemed everything happened too fast. “I heard you had candles,” he whispered.</p><p> </p><p>William looked at him, feigning confusion, “so does the temple, what of it?” He shot back, only catching how defensive he was when he said it. Nice job, William. Great job not attracting attention. He was glad he had them in his car, and his room. If one source got busted…</p><p> </p><p>Damien shook his head. “You know it doesn’t,” he said flatly, “there haven’t been any since…” he didn’t fill in what, but William knew. “We want to have a vigil for her. Keep them burning for her. I’d just need 5, and you could come. I mean—you were the one that saw her, and there was purple was on the east wall—”</p><p> </p><p>William put his head in his hands a moment. That image haunted him. Thinking that could happen to someone, that one day she was alive and the next, this. Knowing it was a warning from Drusilla just added to it. This wouldn’t stop there, she meant. This could be her. This could be him. He would deny the stars, or else the stars would fall to their spot outside the wall. “Yeah,” he admitted, “I have them. They’re just white, and I’ve been carving elemental symbols into them.” Usually fire and spirit—that the smoke carry his words to her.</p><p> </p><p>Damien nodded, “that works. Would you want to be there?”</p><p> </p><p>It was dangerous, William knew. Somehow, it felt wrong that he wasn’t. He trusted that instinct. “Yeah. Tonight?” He asked, setting paper down over the design and absently copying it. The desk was one janitor away from bearing no trace. He noticed the elemental symbols out of order. Spirit, fire, air, water, earth. That was another clue she’d left him. “Which element are you?”</p><p> </p><p>Damien offered a weak smile. “I’m air.”</p><p> </p><p>William traced his finger along to the third symbol, thinking maybe he was meant to help him. Maybe this was bigger than he’d known. Maybe he needed help. “In return, could you guys help me?” He asked, “it’s going to be a really backwards circle, but <em>she’s</em> missing, and I want to do what I can.” He left out how much he knew, and how much she’d lead him to. “I think this is bigger than me.”</p><p> </p><p>Damien nodded, “we all need each other right now.”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>That night, he found himself at the east wall, passing out candles with elemental symbols carved into the wax. Everyone wore cloaks, but it didn’t stop him from recognizing them. Damien and his boyfriend. Stevie Rae. Erik Night, who he knew from a shared love of Shakespeare, and his participation on monologue competitions. There was an uncomfortable looking girl standing there that he thought he’d seen around. Her tightly curling hair hung out of the hood of the cloak, her lips pressed tightly together, as though afraid she’d break the silence. The girl beside her held her hand. She was a blonde, he noticed, though thankfully not the one who’d come to his table.</p><p> </p><p>Her, he’d met. He swore she was in astronomy at the same time as him. Erin, or something like that?</p><p> </p><p>Standing close to Erik was a guy William also vaguely recognized. Kevin Redbird. He was marked a week ago, and wound up in William’s vampyre sociology. Zoey’s brother. William walked over to hum first. “Kevin,” he greeted, and the red eyed boy looked up, squinting to try to discern who he was. “I’m really sorry for…” he trailed off. How did you express your condolences to a guy whose sister was beheaded as a hate crime? Were there words for that?</p><p> </p><p>Kevin took a deep breath, “thanks… and for the candles… and for what you did there,” he gestured to the wax. His voice was small. He was just a kid—he’d been marked young.</p><p> </p><p>Damien arranged them into a circle, Kevin at the centre, then himself to the east, Shaunee to the south, Erin to the west, Stevie Rae to the north. Jack stood beside him, and Erik hovered awkwardly outside the circle. William didn’t know where to be. He wasn’t a part of this. He was just the guy who saw, and the guy who was stupid enough to endanger himself for candles. Damien turned to face him. “Uh, William… If you want to go to the middle by Kevin. Or… any other element you think you like?” He offered. William walked silently to the centre, where Kevin shot him a grateful attempt at a smile. He didn’t want to be alone.</p><p> </p><p>Erik began, starting at Damien. “It is Air that begins us,” he narrated, his voice turning into something powerful, like his monologues, “air that sustains us. On every breath, every word, every cry, every sigh. It is the air that carries everything we are, everything we tell of ourselves. It is air that carries our words to her tonight.”</p><p> </p><p>Damien sniffled, but lit his candle, which didn’t escape William. They were lighting their own candles.</p><p> </p><p>“Fire warms us. It is the heat of love and passion. The beating heart,” Erik tripped over his next words, “its the warmth of two hands entwined. The torchlight that guides the way. And it is fire that guides us here tonight.”</p><p> </p><p>Shaunee lit her candle too, after pulling a lighter out of her purse. “Sorry,” she said quietly, “couldn’t find matches…”</p><p> </p><p>Erik shrugged, moving to the west, “Water washes away the things we wish- the things we wanted to do better. It cleans the slate. It sates the thirst. It spills from us, in our best and our worst moments. It is constant, and as gentle as it is powerful. It’s water that cleanses away the memory of how it ended. That brings her some kind of rest. Water that we shed in her memory.” Erik’s face was teary as Shaunee passed the lighter, and wordlessly, Erin lit her candle.</p><p> </p><p>Kevin’s was too. William squeezed his hand. “Earth is where we all come from. Flesh made possible by something great and all encompassing. Earth that reclaims us, so that we’re never gone—never lost,” again, he had to stop and take a breath. It made sense that he was the one doing it. He was the best at talking through emotion, and he was in love with her. “Earth is going to take care of our Z now, but earth is also going to take care of us. Keep us here, together, in her memory.”</p><p> </p><p>Stevie Rae sniffled audibly when she lit her candle. This had to be heard for her, with how close they’d been.</p><p> </p><p>Finally, Erik came to Kevin. “Spirit is in all of us. It makes us who we are, who we love. Spirit is the memory we hold, and the imprints of people that aren’t ever truly gone. Spirit is the eternal part of each of us, that crosses through to the otherworld, that returns, that finds the people they love,” he bit his lip. William wasn’t sure if he was intruding, or overstepping to speak, so he didn’t add that he’d felt spirit claim her when he’d said his rushed invocation to it.</p><p> </p><p>Kevin took over, “And it was the element my sister was closest to, so if anyone is able to keep going, it’s her. She’s… spirit, and she’s up there right now looking down at us thinking our cloaks look stupid. Or that it’s good that this many people came out with illegal candles to celebrate her. I think that’d mean a lot. And I think that she’s still here, as long as we don’t forget.” And he lit his candle.</p><p> </p><p>They said a prayer, for Zoey and for each other, and then Kevin closed the circle, and blew out each person’s candle. The group slowly dispersed, talking a bit. He gleaned that Shaunee sat with Zoey in one class, Erin in another. Erin was the last person that saw her, as far as they knew, and Shaunee’s roommate. Kevin was the only one other than William that didn’t have ties to the rest of the group. As they snuck back onto campus, he hung back to talk to him. “I…I know who killed my sister,” he whispered.</p><p> </p><p>Before William could ask, Kevin explained, “my step-dad. He’s part of a radical religious faction who thinks we’re like <em>the devil’s hold on this world</em> or whatever. And that was a quote he said a lot that they left with her, about avenging angels and shit.”</p><p> </p><p>William stopped short. He hadn’t processed the words. <em>The last she sees the angel will deny her</em>.</p><p> </p><p>These same people intended to hurt Drusilla. They were who had her.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>What he wasn’t proud of was what he did when Neferet declared war. Was that he forgot to light his candles the first night. Was that he went to Neferet and asked what he could do—he tried to jump ahead in the text. He tried to follow and not deny the stars. And most importantly, he forgot himself in vengeance.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So yeah, this is a big scene that I hadn't seen coming, but wow did it hit me. And William is right onto the wrong track, so that's cool. the next chapter is going to get him his eyebrow scar, and the respect of some other canon characters that are going to reappear. this story got away on me just So Much. Originally, I was skipping to him finding her in chapter 2. Now, I'm just addressing the second stanza (no time now for chivalry or Ire) in the next chapter.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chivalry and Ire, The Kindling of the Fire</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>William strays from the poem and starts a war.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have a migraine, and I'm doing my best...this chapter isn't perfect, but it exists...</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>No time now for chivalry or ire,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In halos of ash are our martyrs crowned—</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Stars remain in breaths of powd’r and fire.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>They were going in to talk.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He’d been told to talk. He was told the weapon he had, a small knife was in case he needed to defend himself. Kevin had asked him if he was in. And for information, he was. To find her. He thought it would be over tonight—didn’t bother with how many lines were left, his entire binder of notes breaking down words. There was one line that mattered. “The last she sees, the angel will deny her.” He was sure tonight he would meet the angel, and he would not deny her.</p><p> </p><p>William was good with words. No one knew him. He was the perfect fledgling to infiltrate, especially because in the right clothes, with enough concealer, he looked perfect. He was outfitted with an earpiece so he could get direction from their leader, who stood outside the church doors, a bow slung over one shoulder. All he was supposed to do was go in, and ask things. Find out what they were. Bring back what he knew to strategize. <em>Do not engage. Do not reveal what you are.</em> It was drilled into him the entire drive down. He and Kevin swapped a look. <em>They</em> knew something was going to happen tonight—Kev on his sister’s behalf, and William for Drusilla’s sake. A protector and an avenger. They felt every bit like a couple of knights.</p><p> </p><p>He walked in, taking his time to look around the church—it was small enough, only had one exit, where the archer was standing. The windows were stained glass, depictions of their god, and his son. A lamb. A shepherd. The carpet was pilled from time after time that his path was tread, the dark wooden pews scratched. These were used, over and over. The group in the church was near enough to the door, clustered around a small table. A group of middle aged parent-looking people. A couple people closer to his age, dressed in their <em>Sunday best</em>. As he was. Had to play the part. “What have you come in for, son?” A man asked, his eyes fixing on William, as though trying to read whether he was a friend or an interloper.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m here to pray,” he said, and the archer fed him another half of a line about the health of his mother, and his city. He had better ideas of what he was going to say. He went off script. “You see, I’d hoped an <em>angel</em> would bring my love back to me,” he said, getting down to his knees and resting his weight on his feet, clasping his hands together in front of him for want of hers. He put on a great show, even as the archer asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing. He didn’t react to his earpiece in the slightest.</p><p> </p><p>The man’s expression softened. “What’s her name, son? We’ll pray for her.”<br/>
<br/>
</p><p><em>“Kev needs you to know his stepdad is the one talking to you. Watch what you say.” </em>The archer hissed, <em>“what are you playing at here, Will?”</em></p><p> </p><p>“Almighty God,” he called out, looking tothe floor, and his own, white knuckled clasped hands, “I pray you send your angel. I pray whoever spirited her away, wherever you put her, that no harm comes to her. That the <em>angel</em> hears her name and knows that we don’t forget. We don’t lose her name. We don’t deny her. In her name, I pray. Send Drusilla home.” It was the most backhand, passive aggressive prayer he could have dropped in front of what appeared to be a group of zealots, by Kevin’s description. The archer cursed into the earpiece, so he turned the volume down. Whatever mission he was on didn’t matter until she was safe. They had to know he knew them, knew their scheme.</p><p> </p><p>They had to know he wasn’t taking another minute of it. Her being in danger, him going in circles of words. It was over now.</p><p> </p><p>One of the men, one with a stiff moustache and some sports logo on the front of his jacket said, “now, it isn’t my business, but anger is one of the stages of grief. It’s okay to be upset, but the Lord did not call you to anger. If she’s been taken by the angels, she’s in a better place now, and you’ll need to accept that to find peace.” He put his hand on William’s shoulder, an attempt at comfort. He denied her. He called her dead. He told William to deny her if he wanted peace, which sounded a great deal like a threat.</p><p> </p><p>“Where’d you take her, <em>angel?”</em> He spat. “She knew it would come to this: the last she sees, the angel will deny her. Where the hell is she?” He spat, getting in the man’s face like he knew what he was doing. Searching, longing, taking to stars, sifting words—it had all taken a toll. It was the closest anyone had seen to ferocity. These people were, as far as he knew, capable of murder. They killed Kevin’s sister, and he was going to end it at her. Drusilla wasn’t their sacrifice.</p><p> </p><p>The man looked to the rest of his friends for help as he said, “son, I don’t know the first thing about what you’re talking about, but I think I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” And two of the younger men from the group walked over to stare him down from either side of him.</p><p> </p><p>William tried again, “A week ago now, you—” he pointed to the one Kevin identified as his step-father, “killed your daughter, and now <em>you</em>, the Angel, whatever that means in your ranks—you have someone I’m looking for. So you’re going to take me to Drusilla now. It’s all over.”He tried to control his voice, control the anger. Sound braver and stronger than he was.</p><p> </p><p>They didn’t like that much. One of them had even picked up one of the candlesticks from the door, armed with it. William chose his moment well. He wiped off the concealer, and stood there, eyes blazing, the crescent on his forehead exposed. Kevin’s step-father was about to say something when Kevin burst through the doors, demanding to know what he’d done. Why Zoey?</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t believe you’d be so <em>stupid</em>,” the archer berated, while William lay on the back seat of the car, staring out the window at the skies, realizing it was a new moon. No light. No goddess up there to tell him where she was, what he’d done. No direction. He couldn’t find the North Star through the ambient light, and his throbbing head. He really was lost</p><p> </p><p>“What the <em>hell</em> did you think you were going to accomplish?” He demanded, interrupted by Kevin before he could carry on.</p><p> </p><p>“More than diplomacy did,” Kevin sniped, getting a withering look from the archer, but not backing down, “they killed my sister. I don’t care that he didn’t admit it. Stark, you don’t know them like I do, okay?” He snapped. It was at that moment that William realized, in his clouded head, full of smoke and bloody, that Kevin was so young. He was a kid, upset that his sister was dead. William had assumed there was evidence these people were it. He’d thought that was why he found her.</p><p> </p><p>The car started, prepared to leave the scene. Finally, William answered his question, “my girlfriends’s missing…she…there were so many signs that he had her. I was sure…” he trailed off,</p><p> </p><p>The wooden beams of the church crackled and smoked, and the archer—Stark was what Kevin called him—sighed as he drove off, counting the parishioners on the lawn to make sure all of them made it out. “How in the fuck did you think a group of dads and a couple of jocks had the missing girl from poetry class, and why did it not occur to her that she probably just rejected the change?” He demanded, before getting to more pressing matters, “who decided it was a good idea to <em>set a church on fire?” </em>He asked, with the air of an exhausted dad coming home to a burning stove.</p><p> </p><p>The two responded simultaneously: “A candle got knocked over when the guy hit me in the head with a candlestick.” And “I got mad.”</p><p> </p><p>Stark looked at Kevin first. “You <em>got mad?” </em>He asked, wondering if this meant Kevin had set the fire, and they were gonna be dealing with arson charges on top of all the rest of it.</p><p> </p><p>Kevin shrugged. “I saw the candle go down, and I thought this place was terrible, and these people hurt my sister, and I hoped it burned to the ground, and the fire started going up the beam,” he explained, “I can’t explain it, I just… it happened.” He sounded baffled. William said nothing, replaying the night to himself. How baffled the man seemed, when he accused him. They were bigoted, yes, but they couldn’t be the angel Drusilla had written to him of.</p><p> </p><p>He’d gone in there and gotten into a brawl, and all it had done was get him slightly singed, burn down a building, and heighten tensions between humans and vampyres.</p><p> </p><p>Stark echoed his sentiments, “well, I hope both of you know what you’ve just started…”</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>An hour later, William was laying in the infirmary, his head pounding while the vampyre in charge dealt with Kevin, whose lungs weren’t appreciative of the smoke inhalation at all. The door creaked in, and the high priestess walked in. William had seen her many times, but had the impression that he didn’t know her, no one did. She looked immaculate, as though she was a depiction of a person, and not the person herself. Her deep auburn hair was up—she’d likely just had something she had to do.</p><p> </p><p>She approached William first, looking him over. “Stark tells me you know something of a conspiracy the People of Faith are orchestrating,” she said, with no formalities, “and that you suspect another fledgling was involved. William couldn’t read her, couldn’t read what she was asking for, but he felt as though she had his answers before he said them.</p><p> </p><p>“I— A girl from my poetry class went missing. She wrote three lines of a villanelle the day before, and the last line was ‘the last she sees, the angel will deny her,’ so I saw the message they left with Zoey and I thought…” he said only the truth, but left out the rest of the poem, or the funeral, or the drawing. Maybe he’d be safe if he stuck to the truth.</p><p> </p><p>Her brow furrowed, before she nodded, “Drusilla,” she repeated. “We found her,” she said, without hesitation. “She was in a safe house of theirs. She was off campus for too long, without any other vampyres… I’m sorry William,” she trailed off, but he knew what that implied. It couldn’t be. Drusilla wasn’t dead. She told him he’d deny the stars when it was time. Unless, tonight, his actions had gotten her killed.</p><p> </p><p>Tears prickling his eyes, he asked, “could I see her?” He just needed to know if it was true. If she was actually gone. He refused to accept it until there was no other option. Until he could look at her face, and know the stars were never to uncross. Until then, for her, he couldn’t give up.</p><p> </p><p>Neferet shook her head, “she was found while you were recuperating. Her family has requested we send her back to London for a proper funeral. She’s on the flight right now.” Her face was a mask, but it arranged into sympathy. “I’m sorry, William. I’m sure she’d have appreciated your valiance. What they did will not be forgotten.” And that sounded almost like a threat, but he just agreed softly that it wouldn’t, too in shock. Her hand pressed to his forehead, a warm feeling radiating through the gash over his eyebrow.</p><p> </p><p>She assured him she would be here, if he needed to talk. He’d never wanted that less than now. He picked at the arm-rest of the padded, cotlike bed, where the fabric had torn back to expose foam, eventually finding a small, rolled up piece of paper. "Chivalry and Ire, the kindling for his ire," was written across the top, in her distinctive hand. then, a little lower on the page, "martyr in ash, I know your heart."</p><p> </p><p>Once discharged, the first thing he did was to get back to her poem immediately, and read through it, search for any signNeferet had lied, and the message Drusilla had left him meant she was out there. She wasn’t dead. He found something he wished he’d thought of, it even matched the note she'd left—“No time now for chivalry or ire/in halos of ash are our martyrs crowned.”</p><p> </p><p>She’d told him not to do it. He sat in his window and lit a candle, after carving in spirit and fire. It was time to go back. Time to be who he was, the man whose heart she said she knew. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, fearing his voice would crack if he tried to speak any louder, not trusting himself to get the words out through tears. “I…you told me the stars wouldn’t be denied if I acted too fast. This wasn’t time. You… you saw it. No time for chivalry or ire. But I’m hoping you’re still there. I’m hoping you can hear me,” he trailed off, “stars remain, in breaths of powder and fire, and I’m hoping that means as long I’m consumed…As long as my heart doesn't change, and you said you knew it...”</p><p> </p><p>She knew his heart. That had to mean she trusted him to do what she needed. She told him when she needed him, he'd deny the stars. That had to mean it wasn't over. He looked out the window, desperate for a sign. The new moon yielded no solace, not until the clouds dispersed enough he could see one star—the North Star, the one sailors used to find their way home.</p><p> </p><p>He could too.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Make Sense of It</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Neferet learns of where her missing student is. Angelus learns fear.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>two chapters, 2 days. How can we tell I'm feeling it. It was a matter of time before Neferet showed up, considering I love her (even though in this fic, she's Not Great--this was A Time In Her Life pre-lynette, but hey, it'll turn around)</p><p>We all know me well enough to know Lynette will be in it probably. </p><p>Anyway, this chapter changed the rating of the whole fic, and made half my implied/referenced tags actually necessary. Totally skippable, bc none of It is in Spike's PoV, so you won't miss the main narrative. Angelus comes Real Close to getting killed over it, becasue Neferet, as we know, has Trauma, and she would absolutely loathe him, tbh. But Dru is naked when she comes back red. And we know that's bad.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Neferet</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The last she sees, the angel will deny her.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>She’d heard the words both from the fledgling in the infirmary, and from Stark. She’d known the girl was a prophetess, and it was with a strange kind of dread that she’d approached the subject of her whereabouts. It was increasingly likely she’d rejected the change and slipped through the cracks. Anastasia was her mentor—she wasn’t known to withhold that kind of information, and besides which, if she had been witheld, Neferet needed to find her before she awakened as a red fledgling.</p><p> </p><p>What didn’t sit well was the name: Angel. Just after she’d disappeared, a fledgling named Angel had made the change. Quite early, he was only a fifth former. She’d never much cared for his thoughts—though he’d be useful in the war. He was vicious—a trait she normally preferred, were it not for his preferences. Angel didn’t care for fair fights. He preferred to exert his viciousness on the helpless.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> She saw too much of Arthur in him, though he seemed to know he was on a short leash in her vicinity.</span></p><p> </p><p>Perhaps it was a coincidence that his name should appear in the line. When she was able, she confirmed the other lines with Blake—<em>“Stars remain in breaths of Powder and Fire,/the fume of sighs that never made a sound/the last she sees the angel will deny her.”</em> But learned that, more importantly, the other fledgling—William—wrote a sonnet that was supposed to be the other half of the poem. Blake thought they were involved. More curious that William described her as a girl from class, when he’d started a fight in a church, and written back to her poem.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> What was he trying to do, downplaying their involvement--unless she'd seen something that necessitated it. Neferet didn't care for the possibility that he knew anything about her. </span></p><p> </p><p>William couldn’t be the one hiding her. Those meddling humans, on whom she pinned the act weren’t actually capable, least of all at outwitting a prophetess on Neferet’s school grounds. The angel, that meant was either in her ranks, or a greater threat from the human zealots than she’d anticipated, or Aphrodite had foreseen. <em>Unlikely. </em></p><p> </p><p>Anastasia was her next source—if just to confirm she was missing, and not dead. She waited, and picked her moment, to express her concern at what William had indicated to her. All Anastasia knew was that she vanished in the day—she’d been seen the night before. That gave Neferet a better time, but little if any workable information.</p><p> </p><p>Angel was her first suspect, and loathe though she was to enter his head, it seemed a necessary evil. Despite his utility in the war, it seemed he’d left campus, which felt like an admission of guilt. It took another two weeks to bring him back to campus, by which point, there was sufficient tension with the humans that the first overtures of war were beginning, and he was rendered necessary for some unimportant skirmish that would bring him into her reach. </p><p> </p><p>The instant he'd arrived, she had Stark escort him to her office, where she waited behind her large, glossy wooden desk. He seemed at loss, when he entered. “High Priestess?" He asked, “was there something you needed?”</p><p> </p><p>A smile played out on her blood red lips, as she tilted her head, and breathed in to speak, tasting his fear on the air. “Yes,” she paused, not yet searching him. She had to put the thought in his head before she sought it. “I have reason to suspect one of our more competent enemies has something that I want. As you may have been aware, I had a second prophetess on campus. Aphrodite was only the more…pliant of the two.” Pliant was an overstatement--Aphrodite was simply the more easily persuaded, with champagne and other luxuries. It was harder to understand Drusilla, and harder still to bribe her.</p><p> </p><p>He seemed to hesitate--she was certain that indicated some kind of guilt. Now just to reel him in, “the other was a fourth former named Drusilla, you may have known her from your own <em>indiscretions.</em> I believe you were frequently in her room, in your involvement with Darla?” She asked, rather pointedly. She didn’t like where all these signs pointed to.</p><p> </p><p>When first she’d heard his visits, she pictured it: she’d seen doors creaking open. A silhouetted man in the door. “Awake, are you?”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Hands. </span></p><p> </p><p>It took everything in her not to kill him then. Fledglings did similar all the time without repercussions.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> He was the wrong kind of vicious for her not to be immediately set off. </span></p><p> </p><p>“Darla’s roommate?” He asked, shifting his weight. He seemed uncomfortable enough that Neferet assumed whatever he’d done was seeping out of his mind—would be within reach. She reached out, probed. The girl was curled small and wan, underneath a blanket. Her dark brown hair strewn out around her head, almost a halo. Her skin so pale she looked as though she were already dead--bloodless. A purple bruise on her shoulder, from a hand. Her eyes were closed. She whispered, “it’s dark now, Angel. The stars have no words for you, and nor do I.”</p><p> </p><p>“The stars have no words for you, and Nor do I.” Neferet repeated, feeling the darkness writhing, twisting around her arms, flickering. It was hard not to hurl It all at him, see him reduced to pulp before her. The girl was sick, weak, hiding in the bed. She wondered if that was how she’d looked. It took every fibre of her being not to kill him where he stood, especially when he gaped at her, jaw dropped, that she’d excavated the words form his memories. “What did I just see, Angel? Make sense of it.”</p><p> </p><p>His jaw dropped, and he paused, before he said. “William found Zoey, right? Did you wonder why he was out there, roaming the east wall so close to when she died? Darla found a map that had her marked on it. We needed her off campus, because she knows… more than she should.” He made the leap in logic that if she didn’t think the church had her, it was because Neferet <em>knew</em> they were incapable—meaning someone else had killed Zoey. “She knows who did it,” he bluffed, “so we needed to get her out of the picture.”</p><p> </p><p>Neferet narrowed her eyes, “did she tell you who did it?” She asked.</p><p> </p><p>He shook his head. “She said it came from within our walls. I… well, you know my feelings on humanity, Neferet. I thought if someone was making a warning shot, it was a necessary one.” She didn’t look into him on that—he’d never have been able to say it if he thought it was her, but it would convey to him the gravity of her ire. He wouldn't survive to tell anyone, in any case.</p><p> </p><p>She rose, and stood before him, close enough she could nearly taste his breath. “And I was not informed of this?” She asked, not giving him any time for excuses, “Let’s be honest with each other, <em>Angel.</em> If it came from within my walls, you can’t hold any illusions about my knowledge of it. I can go inside your head and pluck out the words you’ve heard. Do you think a girl, especially one so renowned could be killed without my knowledge?” She demanded.</p><p> </p><p>She’d given him no good option—either he had to call her powerless or callous. When he didn’t speak, she continued: “Zoey is dead because <em>I</em> willed it so,” and as she spoke, her children, the strands of Darkness crept along his back and limbs, leaving superficial slices from their razor-edged scales. He flinched, and real fear flickered in her eyes, staggering back away from her. “You'd pose even less difficulty to me. There is nowhere you can avoid me, and I do not have to lay hands on you to do it,” she told him, raising her empty hands to show him that her children, not her, were causing his injury.</p><p> </p><p>“Now,” she flicked her fingers to beckon her children off of him, her satisfaction at his fear showing plainly on her face, “take me to her. I expect she’s going to be very useful to me.”</p><p> </p><p>His only relief was that she was almost certainly dead. The last he’d said, as he locked the door behind him was, “No last words then?” And it was four days ago. She’d have long since rejected the change. His biggest concern was getting her dressed before Neferet saw anything else that would piss her off. For a murderer, she sure seemed preoccupied with a simple kidnapping.</p><p> </p><p>***<em>Drusilla</em>***</p><p> </p><p>The sheets were stiff, crisp. Her own body was crusted and sticky, and her head throbbed. Her throat burned. When she opened her eyes, her skin was stained with red, dark, dried red. She helped herself up, and hobbled to the bathroom, remembering where she was by her stark surroundings. A bed. A closet. A bathroom. What else could she need?</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The stars have no words for you, and nor do I</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No last words then?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>She reached the bathroom and her face was monstrous. Dried blood all over her face and her throat and her chest. Caked under her eyes. Her hair wild and full of blood. Red eyes stared back at her. She splashed her face with water, letting it run off her, tasting copper. She rinsed her mouth, and drank. Looked in the mirror, and all that remained were the eyes and the bruises. Still wasn’t her. All the red that had emanated from her, all the tears. She saw her own red eyes. She saw his hands.</p><p> </p><p>It didn’t ever make it easy.</p><p> </p><p>Her skin was still the faintest bit red, either from blood or scrubbing, and the water did nothing to abate her thirst. She dragged herself to the bedroom, and decided, while she could, that she wanted her dress. She was dead. She deserved a proper burial, where they would take her. The back zipped up slowly—it hurt to contort herself enough to reach it. She sat on the carpeted floor, away from the blood stain, head in her hands.</p><p> </p><p>“Please be consumed,” it was her prayer, her way out. “Martyr in ash, I know your heart.”</p><p> </p><p>She knew his words too, the fumes of lovers’ sighs. She knew what he wrote. She knew he would come, would defy the stars. He <em>had</em> to.</p><p> </p><p>The door upstairs opened and she flinched back from it, pressing against the bed frame. It could not be over yet, but she wished there weren’t so many words.</p><p> </p><p>“Would you find your way home?” She asked aloud, to no one who could yet hear.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. When You Knew My Heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>William and Damien do some planning, William takes a page out of Hamlet's book and reads a very pointed poem, and Aphrodite comes into the picture (more on her in chapter 7)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hey, wow, I still update fics. Revolutionary. also, I love the ballad meter. I love the ballad form, and how fluid it is. No backspacing and swearing and making a list of words that rhyme with pane in the margin of a notebook and swearing to any god that listens to tired poets that you can't use Cain on this, even if you really want to as one does slogging through a villanelle, just like "find one rhyme for this word, and then it's over" also the tetrameter/trimeter pattern just...flows. Anyway, catch me, in love with the ballad.Also, catch me in love with writing poetry... I really am William a little</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>William walked the east wall, not sure what had brought him here, or how he’d come. <em>Chivalry and Ire, the kindling for his fire. Martyr in ash, I know your heart.</em> He walked along the wall, trying to keep his eyes to the stars. If he kept watching, kept reading the north star, kept following, he could find his way back. He knew he could. He walked alone in first breaths of dawn, when he heard a cry.</p><p> </p><p>He must have run to her. He didn’t register himself as even moving, just finding himself in the place before the old oak where Zoey had been. And there she was. Drusilla, pale and sickly, but in the same white dress she’d worn the night he saw her, pristine. She took his hands, with a sort of fervent urgency. There was no time, that hadn’t changed. Her eyes were red—both red-rimmed, as though she’d been crying, and <em>red</em>. Her irises were red. She’d changed, but he couldn’t understand what she’d become. Innately, he didn’t care.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> He knew who she was.</span></p><p> </p><p>“Drusilla, love, the north star…” he trailed off, “is it over now?” He asked, “have we found home?” he knew they hadn't. He knew now they didn't get to skip ahead. But he wanted to. </p><p> </p><p>She shhhhed him, putting a finger to his lips. “You were consumed, you, of so many words, kept all of them for me. I know your heart… I know you,” she tripped on her words, as though they stumbled against each other to get out of her throat faster and faster. She had no time, again this time. “You learn to follow the stars, and you’ll learn to deny them yet…”</p><p> </p><p>There was something to her voice, some resignation. “We’re not home yet,” he acknowledged. “There’s too many words left between us.” But he held them. He knew them. He watched for angels. He listened. Just because there were oceans and stanzas between them didn't mean he had to resign, and wait passive for the moments she referenced to come. </p><p> </p><p>She nodded sadly, “you understand now. You took your crown and it didn’t consume you,” she whispered, “martyr in ash, I know your heart, please don’t lose your way.” She cupped his face like she had the first day, and pressed her lips to his. He moved to embrace her, to put his arms around her, when he felt the first rays of the sun hit his face, and her lips were gone. His mouth tasted of ash.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> hsis chest felt the flash of something--almost like fire, and she was gone. </span></p><p> </p><p>He sat up in bed, biting back whatever noise he was going to make, and catching his arms extended, reaching for her. The last rays of the sun were disappearing over the horizon. He got up as fast as his legs would carry, carving the symbols for fire, spirit and air into a candle and rushing outside. He was fast, No one was up this early, and he just looked like a jogger, someone into the early workout. He got to the tree at the East wall, and clambered up it, situating himself on the outside where he’d seen her in his dream. She wasn’t there, but the purple wax he’d spilled for Zoey was. The memories of the things Kevin had said were there. He hopped over the wall, lit his candle, and looked up at the sky, waiting for the North Star, though instinctively knowing where to look. “You know my heart. You know the fire. You know the smoke. You know me, love. I won’t lose you again,” he promised. “The next lines are to listen, and that’s what I’ll do.”</p><p> </p><p>He sat after that, in silence with his tiny votive candle, despite that there was a danger of being seen, his Mark out, with a candle, just off campus enough that he was a target. Even worse if they knew he was the guy who’d started whatever the hell he’d started in the church. But she protected him, he thought. No one came.</p><p> </p><p>He couldn’t say that for the next few evenings. He’d gotten into a few fights, and it didn’t deter him. He didn't start things, but no one got to take that place from him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> He was getting better at defending it. That or the war brewing deterred people for getting that close.</span></p><p> </p><p>Out and out war began the next week. Warriors and armed humans squaring off. Casualties on both sides. The news became increasingly dark, and he kept listening. <em>She’d told him to</em>. She had to know what was going to happen, and what a dark turn they were in for. Maybe finding her would make it stop. Sometime he’d hear something that would lead him. Kevin disappeared at some time, he stopped being able to find him in his classes. As someone capable in fencing, his instruction got increasingly combat focused there, and the class took up more of his day--the entire afternoon. They weren’t fencing anymore, they were sword-training. He was training to become part of a militia, and it gave him somewhere to listen.</p><p> </p><p>Blake, the poetry teacher, he knew was in the thick of it. He had some kind of thing with Neferet, after all. Anyone with eyes knew that. Stark, who’d taken he and Kevin to the church was also an accomplished archer. There was no way that didn’t put him into the thick of it, but he also wasn't easily found, and also usually seen with Neferet. So William kept going to poetry to keep tabs on Blake, kept sitting in his place at the back, where her swirling design hadn’t been removed. He even tried to get Blake to like his analysis—or at least to see that he could also analyze poetry. Maybe that was a way into more information, but he couldn't get carried away and overplay it--Blake already didn't like him.</p><p> </p><p>Damien had continued to sit with him, and sometimes they even talked. Damien pointed out that he was going to get a great eyebrow scar out of he and Kevin’s terrible decision, and that he was going to have to come up with a better story for it than “I got hit with a candlestick while I was jumping to conclusions.” Despite that that was a pretty accurate description of his latest mistakes. </p><p> </p><p>He pointed out that the other way to tell it was that he was involved in hand-to-hand combat in a burning church, even if Kevin being mad was more of a causal factor there, which Damien agreed was a suitably badass origin story. He also wrote on the side of the page, “Kev said you called him ‘the angel’…and said the world’s most passive aggressive prayer about the girl from our class. You told me you were going to need help?”</p><p> </p><p>William wrote back, under the guise of peer-editing, “it might be dangerous, everything seems to be right now. It just felt like too huge a coincidence, getting into a conflict with a big religious group barely after she wrote “the last she sees the angel will deny her.” I don’t know anything, but I think I wanted to think I could find her.” It was as close to the truth as he'd risk--the same amount he told Neferet, in case Damien accidentally told someone.</p><p> </p><p>Damien wrote back, “she’s out there, sweetie. I think you’d know if she wasn’t. I think Nyx wanted you to get this far.” and he offered William a consoling look after he wrote it. He knew this was going to be hard, and William appreciated it. He also appreciated hearing from someone else that he wasn't crazy for deciding after Neferet told him she was dead that she was still out there. He hadn't made it this far for the stars to refuse them.</p><p> </p><p>William wrote back, <em>“thanks.”</em> And then, “I’ll need your help, but I’ll also need the rest of the circle if you can. Whoever is willing. Later this week?”</p><p> </p><p>Damien gave him a definitive nod, and then, “Stevie I can talk to. I don’t know the other two that well.”</p><p> </p><p>“I have astronomy with Erin,” he wrote, “and she seemed to know Shaunee. Do you know where Kevin went?”</p><p> </p><p>Damien shook his head, and then looked up to see Blake watching them, “I don’t know, Will. I think this draft might not be salvageable,” he said, aloud, “your corrections were helpful, but I just don’t think I can get the second stanza to flow properly. It’s the meter. Maybe I’ll see if Stevie Rae has ideas,” and got up to walk to her. William got the message. They—he, most likely, after that stunt—were being watched. He'd watch that too. Maybe he could use being watched to make them believe in him.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Neferet went public about Drusilla being gone the following night, after asking William if he wanted to write something to read about her. It was risky, but he needed to. It would seem so suspicious if he had no words. This was a chance to read the room. He felt like Hamlet, waiting to see who reacted, like he was writing his own messy play about the king and queen and treachery.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Looking for the angel in plain sight, because it had to be an inside job. She hadn't left campus, like Zoey seemed to have.</span></p><p> </p><p>He was careful not to overstep himself with what he wrote. Kept his form simple, a ballad, like Wordsworth’s elegies about Lucy. Made it look like he was just a boy, writing about a girl who the world wasn’t the same without.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> If he went too far trying to call out any specific people, he wasn't going to make it. No chivalry, no ire. Just a message, that she wasn't forgotten. </span></p><p> </p><p>It all happened in the temple, where they'd normally have done full moon rituals, fitted with a screen, and a low podium, which Neferet spoke from, a number of her warriors, Stark being one of them, and a few other professors, as well as the head of the dark daughters sitting odd to the side. William tried to catalogue the people up there, not knowing most of the names. One figure with dark hair reminded him of Drusilla's roommate's boyfriend, but was too far away for him to recognize doom one meeting. </p><p> </p><p>Neferet looked like a grieving High Priestess. Her eyes were a little downcast, looked up bravely. They looked almost a little tear stained. There was no reason but the bad feeling he'd gotten and the fact that she'd told him Drusilla was dead that made him doubt her, but something looked wrong. Something felt performative. William sat somewhere in the middle of the group of fledglings to avoid notice, near Damien, who was near Stevie Rae, though no one dared stand side-by side. Something about this seemed dangerous.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> He couldn't escape the feeling that they were being watched as much as they were watching. </span></p><p> </p><p>Neferet had begun by telling them she was proud that in these dark times, her fledglings had come together to protect one another. And she told them a bit about how the war had begun when, after Zoey, she’d sought justice for her, only to be told by the police that they didn’t care when a witch burned—like they were in Salem or something.That she’d taken matters into her own hands, and a group of their finest warriors head uncovered that the same people who’d killed Zoey had taken a number of their fledglings, none of whom could be saved by the time they found them. They’d been gone too long, locked up in these places, that they rejected the change either before or slightly after Neferet had found them. Names flashed across the screen behind her, with pictures of them. Zoey first, then a girl William had never seen, a boy, a couple other people, Drusilla was near last. Her picture was beautiful. She was in a deep red dress, at what must have been a full moon ritual. It had been taken while she was holding a purple candle that she was about to set down at the base of the goddess statue. The candles already at the base alit her as the moon did, as someone divine, and unknowable. He’d never seen that picture before.</p><p> </p><p>At a closer glance, he noticed a necklace, just the small triple moon symbol, which indicated that she’d once been one of the Dark Daughters. He hadn’t known that either. There was so much no one had told him about her. So much she didn’t have the chance for. There was no time, after all.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Once this was over, he wanted to get to know her better. He wanted to get to the point where he felt like he'd known her all his life.</span></p><p> </p><p>After her, another shock: Kevin Redbird.</p><p> </p><p>He looked to Damien, who gave him a subtle shake of the head. <em>He didn’t believe it</em>. Neither did William. The people they’d met weren’t capable of it, whatever he’d previously thought. Though, if it was them, it made sense, he thought, that they went for Kevin after he accused them of murder, and the fire. He would have been next if that was true, and the warning wasn't there. It might be useful, to get in on something, to tell Neferet he was worried they'd come for him, and he wanted to help. Or that he was righteously furies about Kevin and Drusilla--the latter would even have been true.</p><p> </p><p>He hardly had time to process it, before Neferet was <em>warmly</em> welcoming him up to say a few words. Erik seemed confused--he usually spoke for the group, and it was a skill of his. William walked directly past the group off to the side, looking through them as fast as he could. The Dark Daughters Leader looked out of place, this pretty blonde with a champagne flute sitting in the middle of a group of men with weapons, and a couple professors. He noticed the sword, glinting, strapped to the man he'd been so uncomfortable with. </p><p> </p><p>Looking out, he said, "my name is William, and I was Drusilla's partner. I'd have sworn myself to her as her Warrior, if I'd known there was no time," he said, a little bit of an improvisation. He meant it. It was something he'd thought about since he'd learned what an oath sworn warrior did. It also let Neferet think he wanted to fight, and that he'd fight to avenge her--which he would if that was what it took, and he wasn't acting against the warning. It might get him in, and it was real. When he got back to her, he would swear himself to her, so they wouldn't be parted anymore. So the stars would not be crossed again.</p><p> </p><p>He tried to do as Erik had, take a breath, and channel it, close his eyes, for just a second, and see the moon and the north star, and then speak the rest of his words.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“The world can change in silent ways;</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I once was unafraid</em>
</p><p>
  <em>of endless nights and restful days</em>
</p><p>
  <em>—but now the vow’s unmade.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And how I’ve tried to understand</em>
</p><p>
  <em>when everything feels wrong,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That one short day I held your hand</em>
</p><p>
  <em>and now your hand is gone.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>We wrote together pretty words</em>
</p><p>
  <em>of un-crossing the stars,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But from the moment that I heard</em>
</p><p>
  <em>you’ve never felt so far.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I swear to you the least of things</em>
</p><p>
  <em>--I won’t forget your name,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And through what strife the future brings</em>
</p><p>
  <em>you did not go in vain.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And that each day when rest consumes,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll return to the start,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Back when our love was never doomed</em>
</p><p>
  <em>and when you knew my heart.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He looked out, the emotion on his face real, his eyes darting around the audience. The head of the Dark Daughters was deep into her glass of champagne, and couldn't look at him. She seemed intentionally distracted by her glass, her eyes staying focused on it. He had his Claudius, even if she wasn’t what he expected, and had to be only a step. <em>He makes his virtuosity renowned</em> was the line that told him the angel was a man. She was something though, she was a step. And he did feel a bit better for having said what he did. Maybe she'd hear the vows he made, or the repetition of her words, that she knew his heart. Maybe it was enough that if the angel was out there, he'd know William wasn't going to let go. Most importantly, perhaps, he never said the word die, like it was a curse—like a superstitious actor playing Macbeth. It was a part of his truth, that she was gone, but she was not dead. Damien watched him walk back, and mouthed, “wow.” T</p><p> </p><p>He wasn’t sure if Damien was impressed at the words, at the way he was holding together, though tears prickled his eyes, or at the boldness. He wondered if Damien gathered that he didn’t believe she was gone.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> He wondered what the other fledglings thought, if they started to see something was so wrong. Maybe this was bigger than he and Drusilla, and no one was really gone. </span></p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>He did a little cursory research into his Claudius--perhaps she was Claudius-adjacent and only a Gertrude analogue. She knew, she perhaps had some benefit, but she wasn't the angel. She was, however, a prophetess in her own right. Damien told him about it. She had visions, which was why Neferet gave her so many privileges, like the escort of the warriors, and the seemingly prolific onslaught of champagne. It was curious to him that Drusilla didn't have those benefits, that he'd seen. The combination of her being one of the dark daughters and perhaps even a rival made her suspect.</p><p> </p><p>He learned her schedule next, until he got a feel for when she was alone, and when she called for drinks to be brought up. Three more days, and his luck finally broke though. He caught one of the dark daughters with a case of her drink of choice, struggling with the weight. "Here, let me get that," he offered, and she set it into his arms, sighing in relief. </p><p> </p><p>"You knew Dru, right? You're the poet from the memoriam," she said, hesitating a little as they climbed the stairs. when he nodded, she said, "we didn't know she had a boyfriend. She was...quiet," she trailed off. He gleaned quiet here meant hard to follow from time to time. He was a poet, but others might not have wanted to look into what she was saying as deep. Before he'd figured out how to talk to her, the girl added, "it's good, that you're honest about how you feel, and that you're, or you seem to be, doing okay."</p><p> </p><p>He nodded, trying, "I'm just at a loss. It was so sudden," as a prompt to try to see if she knew anything about Aphrodite seeing anything. Unfortunately, she didn't. She seemed as surprised as he was. And once she figured out he was willing to carry the case all the way, she gave him the room, and the floor numbers, and flitted off. Maybe she just didn't want to talk. Maybe she was anxious for a reason. He didn't have the same suspicions of her as he did of Aphrodite. </p><p> </p><p>When she opened the door, he set down the case, and then said, "I know Drusilla isn't dead."</p><p> </p><p>Aphrodite laughed at him, already smelling of champagne. She was at least a little drunk. "You're in over your head."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Woo hoo, sorry I cut the chapter off early, it just was going to either end up like 6k or 2k, and I went with giving y'all the chapter sooner rather than later. Aphrodite in the next chapter is a thing to look forward to. And the moment at which William bleaches his hair and takes on the name Spike is also coming soon to a chapter near you. Also does anyone else ever have to go look up your chapter names to see if your naming is like thematically consistent. Like, in a fic named Fire and Powder, it feels about right that the chapters are named dramatic stuff, but I still check all the other ones to be like "what's the vibe here" </p><p>Also it's worth mentioning, I've had to make a master doc of all the poetry in this fic, annotated so I remember what it was supposed to lead to. Even if some of</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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